


And So We Beat On (boats against the current)

by wheredwellthe_brave_atheart



Series: Out of This Dull World [7]
Category: Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
Genre: Apocalyptic AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 15:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5169233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheredwellthe_brave_atheart/pseuds/wheredwellthe_brave_atheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He steeples his fingers, lost in calculations he'd hoped he'd never need to make. </p><p>Eventually, he reaches for her and Holly kisses him gently, vowing to make their life together worth at least a fraction of this sacrifice."</p><p>Apocalyptic AU future fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And So We Beat On (boats against the current)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fan fiction using characters from the Artemis Fowl world, created by Eoin Colfer. I do not claim ownership over the world or any characters used. I am not profiting in any way from this work, it is my own invention and for entertainment only, and it is not purported to be a part of Eoin Colfer’s official storyline.
> 
> Title from F. Scott Fitzgerald's breathtaking "The Great Gatsby".
> 
> An alternate, angst-ridden apocalyptic future.

Holly looks at him with clear eyes. "Are you sure?" she asks; breath held. 

He looks back, and sees hope. "Are you?" 

They are. 

...

So he leaves his human life behind and they watch the planet change around them, once filled with hope for a future of both their races together on the planet, now eroded by the harsh truth of human greed, and fairy paranoia. 

They watch, and wait, together. 

It never gets any easier. 

...

They stop riding the Stick, and Haven restaurants are always too full to accommodate them, and Artemis and Butler's presence prompts Holly's landlord to request her relocation. 

The city is unwelcoming as it never was before. 

...

"One of Foaly's ARClights is here, Holly," he calls, one day, as the little bug circles their small room. 

She hurries to join Artemis and Butler, brushing the hair from her face impatiently. 

"Foaly? Caballine? You two there?" Holly speaks into the device. 

The projection screen expands with two long faces on it. Foaly and his wife have been working tirelessly to repeal fairy laws against human contact and human/fairy unions. 

"What's wrong?" Artemis and Holly ask simultaneously. 

"No. 1 was arrested at a protest last night," Caballine explains, as her husband stamps a hoof. "He'd organized... sort of a rally, on your behalf."

Holly curses under her breath. "And it went splendidly, I'm sure," she sighs. 

Foaly whinnies. "Oh, yeah. Dozen fairies arrested, crowd control through the roof, buzz batons, the works. No. 1 got released this morning on account of-"

"-him being the most powerful warlock under the Earth, yes," Artemis finishes for him.

"I can't believe it's gotten so bad," Holly fumes. "Ever since Trouble died in the troll attack-"

"Fairies are terrified to repeat that Turnball situation," Foaly grumbles. "Atlantis was attacked, LEP squadrons were killed, so many lives lost, and it was all because he wanted to save his human wife-"

"Not to mention the security paranoia that's increased in the last forty or so years," Artemis admits. "The Crash scared everyone, the People are panicked at the thought of discovery." 

Their friends suddenly avoid the device's gaze. 

"And... it's getting too dangerous," Butler prompts slowly, the crushing weight of this new reality settling on Artemis's chest, "for you to continue fighting it."

Foaly looks them square in the face. "Yes," he says, and Artemis welcomes his bluntness. 

"I'm expecting," Caballine adds, taking her husbands' hand. "We're so sorry, really, we are." 

Artemis just nods. He doesn't know what to say. His hand itches to reach out and take hold of Holly's, but he can't make himself move. 

"We understand," Holly says calmly, and he hears it as if from far away. "Really, we do. Don't worry about us - you have to look out for your family now." Her smile is unconvincing to Artemis, who knows her features better than any others', and who knows exactly what true joy looks like on her face. 

"We'll still be in contact," Foaly says hastily. "It's not like - like we're abandoning you all together, or anything. And I'm still active online - trying to spread the word, you know. But..."

Butler remains in stony silence, and Artemis feels Holly square her shoulders. "Ten-four, Foaly," she says. "Keep us updated on the kid, okay?" 

Relief floods the couples' equine features, visible even through the projection filter. They will, they're sorry again, they'll be in touch soon.

The ARCLight blinks out. 

Holly's shoulders slump - a lifeline cut. 

Artemis puts a hand over hers, a million thoughts roiling through his mind - 

He still doesn't know what to say. 

...

Minerva Paradiso is a name mentioned in relation to the tension between their races for quite some time, until she relocates to Switzerland to be with her new husband's family, and loses contact with the politics. 

Artemis has to chuckle at the irony of her location. 

...

"Arty, darling, it's time you come home. Enough with this foolishness, this utterly reckless behaviour- don't think your father and I are ignorant, we know what's happening with the fighting, and we're worried out of our minds-!"

He winces at the particular phrasing, but is otherwise unchanged in his convictions. 

...

"I've explained countless times," he says, softly. "But they are unable to willingly let me be. This way, Myles and Beckett are the new heirs, and they will all be so much safer when the fighting escalates, as we both know it will." 

He steeples his fingers, lost in calculations he'd hoped he'd never need to make. 

Eventually, he reaches for her and Holly kisses him gently, vowing to make their life together worth at least a fraction of this sacrifice. 

...

So they capitulate on the numerous times Artemis was presumed dead, and, with the help of their magic, convince his family that their eldest son is lost. 

They watch his brothers remember him with only vague, hazy images of a dark-haired man with a laser pointer and paint splotches; watch his parents quietly let him go, without truly understanding why. 

...

Artemis and Holly are holed up in the bedroom when Butler makes a call. 

"Jules," he says by way of greeting, "just how bad are things topside?"

Butler's sister sends a low whistle through the comm screen. "I've doubled security measures around the manor - Myles and Beck want to go on a holiday to 'play with the fairies', but they're just about the only humans who do."

...

"I can't allow it anymore!" he hisses, as they lie in the dark amidst a grassy field in Dublin, on the run from an Irish branch of the anti-Fairy movement. "I'm the one who chose this life, but Butler, after all he's done to protect me, Holly, this is my chance to ensure he avoids the oncoming bloodshed-"

She flattens her palms against the ferns and her stares Artemis down. "You know he won't agree, he won't even hear of it-"

"He must," he shakes his head frantically. "I can't lose him to this - he deserves a better chance than ours, and this way, it's my choice."

...

Butler and Juliet are harder to leave - they fight more, and try to hold on for longer, refusing to give in to the magic. 

But they do, eventually. And it costs them all greatly. 

...

They kiss because there's always been a reason not to, except now there's no one left to protest but themselves. 

(There never was anyway. But at least this way they can pretend.)

He feels all the anger and sadness and determination in both of them, running between their bodies like a current that makes his hands tremble when he's not touching her. 

His teeth tug at her bottom lip, and he's falling and she's catching him forever. 

...

The numbers flash across his screen, climbing higher by the millisecond. 

"It's war," he whispers, eyes flickering with the technology. "Fatality reports are coming in already, the Szechwan province is in full battle, and protesting in Wales has broken out into brawls...Atlantis is securing the dome but they've sent out loaded submarines...British Columbia has ships in the Pacific harbor waiting..."

Artemis trails off in disbelief, knuckles white as his fingers hover over the V-board. 

Holly eyes him sideways, watching the information stream in and seeing it reflected across his ashen face. 

She stands and swipes a hand across the gas screen, shutting down the programming. She climbs into his lap and kisses him harshly, painfully, trying to clear their minds of the death tolls and attack lines and defeat. 

They fuck in the chair, and against the console, and on the floor of their makeshift command centre, as if to remind themselves of all they gained by choosing this life. 

Holly doesn't think it really helps, but it doesn't hurt, either. 

...

"Let's go," she insists, one night when the casualties are raging and their bunker in Rio is crumbling around them, when the chattering of his teeth and twitching of his fingers is too painful to watch anymore. "We could just leave, Artemis, if there's no other option. You and I-" she grabs his hand fiercely. "Arty, we could go anywhere."

He combs his hair back as his communications radio lights up, Mulch's voice grumbling over the speaker to report more disasters. 

"No," he says. "We couldn't, Holly."

She nods, and readies herself into a crouch beside him. 

He was right. They never could run from a fight - it wasn't in either of their natures. 

"And so we press on," she murmurs, strapping on her wrist computer. 

He swallows. "Once more into the breach, my friend."

...

For all the talk of elf-human hybrids, and the dangers they pose to the planet, it's not a path available to them. 

The night they finally realize it, Holly feels cold and tired as Artemis wraps his arms around her. A few errant tears run down his dirtied face, but the morning dawns with the same battles raging and Holly lets go. 

...

Miraculously, they both survive the war, and live to see their planet ravaged, their populations decimated, and famine and disease widespread. 

Millions of others are not so lucky. 

...

"Mother has died," he comes to her one night a few years after the battles have ceased, with grief in his concaved features. "After everything, it was cancer in her bones."

Holly closes her eyes, remembering both her own mother's death and the depth of Angeline Fowl's love for her family. 

"I'm so sorry, Artemis," she whispers. She reaches for his hand, but he flinches away. 

"I should have been there," his voice shakes with grief and guilt. "I should have been with her. I am her son and I wasn't even there as she died." 

He begins a jerky pace in front of her, weaving like a badly-programmed automaton. "I could've intervened, there must have been something - we could have healed her-" 

But Holly feels anger and resentment surge up under her breastbone. "No, no, you couldn't have," she snaps, disgusted at the words even as she spits them out. "You chose this life, Artemis, you gave them up, and I won't be held responsible for not healing your family as they die like humans always do, alright?" 

She wants to swallow back every acid word as she sees shutters close behind his eyes. A part of her aches to take his head in her hands, to let him be the young boy she once knew, to let him mourn the family he lost by loving her. 

But she can't. And she shouldn't. 

She knows that underneath it all, there's the poison fear of her own fragile human lover dying that she still carries with her, even though his lifespan is closer to her own now. Humans who hold the love of a fairy do reap some benefits, as it turns out. 

And they do love each other - that had, after all, been the prize of their sacrifice. 

They love fiercely, deeply, and it hurts. 

"Artemis-" she tries, but he's already turned his heel and walked away. 

...

The decades pass, and they re-learn what they knew about each other. They fight horribly, screaming matches and months of silence, with words wielded like weapons to cut deep, down to the very marrow of their failures and secret shames. 

Artemis learns what it is to see centuries stretched before him, while Holly remembers the weight of that time, and they both remain on the edges, still condemned by fairy and human society. 

They grow, together, carrying the other's grief when their losses feel like too much, and each tries desperately not to resent the other. 

Most days, they succeed. 

...

The Earth is changed, the Sun hotter and the waters cooler, with a kind of scattered emptiness that is felt hollow in the bones. 

But the planet keeps on turning, and little things are the same, like birdsong, and the cycle of the moon, and Holly's skin against his own. 

...

"I want to try again," she announces, after almost a century has passed. 

His mouth quirks under the beard he's been wearing for the last decade or so, and he taps his screen to open a file loaded with diplomacy bills, delegation plans, lists of trustworthy ambassadors. 

"As always," he smiles at her proudly, "great minds think alike."

She thinks it may be time to wear a pair of wings again, and she grasps his hand in her own.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you thought :)


End file.
